The present application is directed to a plurality of wastewater treatment facilities, potable water treatment facilities or the like in combination with a remote monitoring computer system that monitors such facilities, especially via the internet and sends alarm signals to facility personnel when the computer detects or predicts that effluent quality or other measurements either are or will be outside of preselected parameters, predict process failures, and/or determine that the facility could be better optimized. The alarm signals are preferably sent to personnel in a hierarchal process associated with the severity of the problems detected or predicted.
Wastewater treatment plants or facilities are used to treat virtually any water streams containing pollutants that are discharged into rivers, lakes or the like within the United States. Wastewater streams to be treated by such facilities can originate from a wide variety of sources, including industrial plants wherein the water may be polluted with a wide variety of chemicals and municipal sewage where the water may be polluted with large amounts of organic matter and microbes. Almost every waste water treatment facility receives water that is uniquely polluted. Nevertheless, the effluent from each site or facility must meet certain governmental or self imposed regulatory parameters for effluent water quality and all discharged water must be within such quality parameters. Failure to meet the required effluent parameters can result in substantial fines and damages or even criminal sanctions to operators of such plants. More importantly, failure to have the effluent quality within the set parameters may result in damage to public health, damage to a surrounding ecosystem and environment or even loss of human life in severe situations.
Further, fresh water facilities are used to prepare drinking or potable water for use by the public. Such facilities are a major concern with respect to potential tampering and general homeland security.
Water treatment facilities include numerous electronic or readable sensors that provide immediate feedback to operators that indicate to operators the status of various quality parameters within the water at various locations along the treatment process. The effluent water is especially tested either by mechanical sensors or by operators taking and analyzing physical samples. Modifications can be and are made in the overall process when the operators discover that some part of the process is not performing correctly or where effluent quality measurements suggest that the process is not meeting desired quality parameters.
Water treatment facilities are typically complex with numerous tanks, basins or the like that often hold millions of gallons of water and often cost in the tens of millions of dollars. Because of the complexity of the processes at each facility, it is difficult to fully control the process and maintain constant compliance with regulations or operating parameters. Furthermore, unforseen events can occur in the process that lead to problems with effluent quality, but which may not show up immediately at various sensor stations or which may show up too slowly to prevent the entire treatment process from cycling out of control. During such events effluent quality parameters and/or some other critical factors may exceed desired levels and it may take a substantial time to get the entire process back under control. Meanwhile, the facility operators risk discharging water that does not meet quality parameters.
It is also desirable to be able to predict process upsets and failures that may or may not directly effect effluent quality, such as a “bulking” problem in a biological waste water treatment facility that may result in facility shutdown. Further, it is desirable to optimize such processes to reduce costs, for example, when excess air or oxygen is being injected into the water during treatment.
Still further, while facility operators are well trained, it is possible for an operator to commit accidental operating error or even deliberately modify operating conditions to create a problem with the effluent or any water or for an outside party to deliberately sabotage the process.
While facilities often have multiple sensors for various parameters, it is possible that failure of one or more of the sensors may provide results that mislead operators and which eventually cause the effluent to be outside the required quality parameters.
Consequently, it is desirable to have a water treatment facility monitor system which in real-time samples data and continuously reviews sensor outputs and database information from the treatment process throughout a facility to provide backup to the operation of the facility, both at an operator level and at a management level, and to continuously predict effluent water quality based upon sensed real-time operating conditions and historic data, especially where it is difficult for an operator to foresee that various events may culminate in unacceptable effluent water quality or where defective equipment does not give operators advance warning of problems and to predict process upsets or failures while optimizing usage of energy, chemicals and the like.
Further, the monitoring system is preferably off-site and connected in real time by an internet system (which would include or be in some instances an intranet system) to a central computer having an artificial neural network which can simultaneously monitor a plurality of such facilities, each treating water with somewhat different pollutants.
The monitoring system preferably includes an expert system to predict effluent quality problems and process upsets or failures such as bulking, pH exceeding a preselected maximum, or overt toxicity.
Finally, the degree of severity of problems varies greatly from minor to catastrophic. Consequently, such a monitoring system needs to have preselected alarm thresholds for various conditions either directly measured or calculated such that when the computer determines that a trigger, such as an exceeded threshold or predicted future upset, has occurred, then the computer will send one or more alarms through an alarm system to facility personnel and authorities. Preferably, there is a hierarchy set of such thresholds depending upon how much an actual or calculated parameter exceeds the threshold value or depending on how important the parameter is to effluent water quality or surrounding environmental control. For situations where minor or easily corrected problems, associated with effluent quality, process upsets or optimization, are detected, an alarm may be sent to the facility operators. Where problems of a higher nature are noted, alarms may be sent to a first tier of management, to an upper tier of management independent of or in addition to the facility operators, or to government officials.
In this manner, a facility located anywhere on the globe can be monitored by a computer system that is quite advanced and can provide alarms to those having responsibility for the plant should it appear that effluent water quality parameter or another important factor is predicted to be outside selected limits. In this manner, steps can be taken to control or avoid the problem or upset. Further, the computer system can learn over time and with the study of multiple facilities, so as to provide greater expertise and skill in prediction of problems from data representative of process conditions that may not raise a level of concern in an operator.